Flashes In The Pan

Garden gnomes love flash fiction. We’re not even picky about what it is about. We ARE picky, however, about quality. We wouldn’t dare contaminate our gardens with anything less than the best.

Our tendencies lean a bit in these directions:

Satire

We love to read stuff that makes us laugh. If you can write zany, wacky, or incredibly funny flash, then we want to read it. We might even publish it. We’ll definitely plant it in our gardens and watch it grow.

Essentially, the punk genres of literature can be set during any historical time period – past, present, or future. You can call it historicalpunk, if you wish.

For our purposes, give us something punky (punkish?), and make it good.

Weird

Okay, one person’s weird is another person’s perfectly normal. We don’t care what you call it. We want your stories on Xanax. Prozac even. Or just give us a drunken binge with a stethoscope around your neck.

Give us your bizarro, new weird, pulp, noir, gothic, dark, and supernatural fiction. Create your own weird genre if you have to. Just give us something strange that no one else will touch.

Your Best Bet

Whether you are angling for satirical, horrific, or weird, your best bet at getting published at Garden Gnome Publications is to make it absurd. Think Kafka + Vonnegut, David Lynch + Waiting for Godot, or Dr Seuss + Steampunk Tolkien + The Book of Revelation. Garden Gnomes like absurdities of all flavors.

Keep your stories longer than 300 words and within 1,234 words, give or take a baker’s dozen. They’ll be published in our Flim-Flam room. Sorry, we can’t pay for these, but it’s a good way to get your foot in our garden and be recognized for your hard work. From there, it’s just a short leap into anthology status.

Simultaneous submissions or OK, but works previously published online will not be accepted. Please let us know if your fiction is accepted elsewhere.